


It's The Very Devil Here

by Kikithehousemoose



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hadestown - Mitchell, Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Anatole Kuragin (mentioned) - Freeform, Character Study, F/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Unhappy marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 08:58:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikithehousemoose/pseuds/Kikithehousemoose
Summary: A character study comparing the marriage of Helene Kuragina and Pierre Bezukhov as portrayed in The Great Comet musical to the marriage of Hades and Persephone as portrayed in the musical Hadestown, with respect to their original sources.





	It's The Very Devil Here

**Author's Note:**

> Lord help me I'm back on my shit. Here's another Helene/Pierre character study piece because apparently I hate happiness or something?? I've been listening to Hadestown recently and, yall, Helene and Persephone are literally just the same character, Amber Grey just plays the same woman in two different musicals..
> 
> I tried to make this not /too/ skewed to just the musicals; it can be taken as any version of Helene and Pierre, but I had to twist Persephone and Hades towards Hadestown. There's also one (1) reference to Biblical myth because my dumb ass was finally able to draw the comparison between stories. Oh I also have one TAZ reference cause I can't help myself. Hope you enjoy????

Being married wasn’t so bad when her estate was the Underworld.

It hadn’t been Helene who had first compared Pierre to Hades; the idea had come from the man himself. Pierre was a well-educated man, literate and versatile to the point of passion. He read the works of any great scholar he could get his hands on, attempting to satisfy his ceaseless hunger to find meaning in the world. One of the endless courses he served to this Hunger was that of Greek mythology, a truly classical endeavor, taking to Greek and Latin the way the old learned men of England had, giving it as much reverence as he did any more appropriate Russian poet. Usually his intellectual meal of the day was private, but it never took long to hear the man babble something about it whenever he tried lengthy conversation. Helene never paid too much attention to his ramblings, not as much as he might have thought she did, but his short ramble about the Greek Underworld and the mythology of Hades stuck with her more than even she expected it to.

She started seeing it, then, in the time afterwards. She first noted how he kept to the shadows, even in his own home, preferring to stay out of anyone’s way rather than confront them, even if they were one of the servants. His estate was his kingdom by all rights of the word, yet he was no true ruler except in name. Pierre had not told her anything that suggested Hades did not rule the Underworld with an iron fist, but as she spotted him politely slinking back to his study after dinner, she couldn’t help but reach that conclusion on her own.

The Bezukhov household had always been one of wealth, riding off of a history of success long before the time of his father. The Underworld, in similar fashion, was only a place of bleakness and suffering for the common, unfortunate soul. Hades was, after all, also over the domain of wealth. Even reigning over somewhere so morbid as the Underworld, he was undeniably rich, but apparently did not flaunt it enough that is was a widely recalled fact about him. Pierre, too, only acted upon his wealth when he needed to, though it was less for his personal gambling and more an act of charity that allowed others to gamble. Pierre decorated like the Underworld, too, which is to say that he had a very minimalistic and simple aesthetic that he was able to arrange in a moment and leave alone for the rest of time, fancy but dreadful to anyone who had to linger upon any one aspect of the design for too long. She had no idea how so much wealth could feel so plain, but Pierre seemed to thrive in it in the way that Pierre did, quietly and in secret until the fruit of whatever he had been stewing on was spilled upon whatever unfortunate soul found themselves talking to him for too long.

Helene’s areas of the house, too, were a reflection of her personality. She had the walls and shelves decorated as richly as she decorates her own neck, adorned with trinkets and bold colors, constantly in competition with every other house she’d ever been to. Helene’s richness was born out of the standards of society, her interests waxing and waning with the tides of fashion, ever so seasonal. She always knew exactly when and how to follow the customs of the year, and every so often dared to lead such a revolution, being among the first to style her hair in such a way or wear a new kind of necklace with a dress that she wouldn’t have been caught in a few months prior. Helene brought about change in society whether they were ready for it or not, but did it with such a natural confidence that all affected assumed that it was how it was meant to be all along. No matter other women’s opinion of Helene, they could not help but be influenced by her-- it was their decision whether whatever new storm she brought on was for the better or the worse for them.

Persephone stayed in the Underworld for one month with each seed she consumed. Helene would eat no seed of Pierre’s, but each new pin or earring seemed to carry the same weight with all the meaning it had behind it. He could not make her love him, but he could buy lengths of her affection with material wealth, or so he seemed to think. He knew that Helene really was that simple of a woman, holding a weakness for all things shiny and tangible. He was not foolish enough to think that allowing her to buy things made her any more attracted to him, but it helped in some of his specific melancholies, when he was brewing in a pit of uselessness, when he needed to feel like a good anything, even for a minute. Helene saw this need clearly enough to humor him whenever she did receive a new chain on her shackles, ooo’ing and aaa’ing, kissing him in thanks before bounding off to pair it up with some pretty gown that was always cut too low. For a few moments, he could pretend to be a happy husband, and she a giddy young wife, and the gold would glint off the candles in a way that gave them both a glimpse of sunlight.

Pierre, too, took pity upon lost lovers. He knew too well what it was like to yearn in desire for something, to feel so restricted by all that kept them from taking it. There was envy in his gaze, too, in his hand as he handed over however many rubles would make some young something blush in happiness. How he longed to be that kind of sage, to be so carefree and in love, so devoted to the pursuit of basic pleasure instead of holding himself down on a barbed throne of apathy and disillusionment. Pierre wanted nothing more than to be young again, to be naive to the cruelness of the world. He could list with each thump of his heart all the laws of the universe and how they destroyed every living man; he could list, too, all the world had stolen from him, and even more what it continued to take from everyone else. Life was the greatest conman of them all, and Pierre felt that it was he alone who carried the weight of this knowledge, as if he were the only one who could look life in the eye and snarl a warning while it continued to pick the pockets of his soul until he had nothing left but his discontempt. Pierre carried the ways of nature over him like a cloak, heavy and dark, pooling around his feet to sour the air wherever he walked. He did not want this sort of burden, but it had been handed to him, as it seemed everything in his life was handed to him. Pierre, King of the Underworld, observer of the natural progression of life and death-- it was his curse to bear. It was how he was defined to the rest of the world, the world that lived in blissful unawareness, pretending like they too were not moments away from losing everything to the snapping jaws of the dog of mortality. Hades let them live in whatever dream that could build for themselves, knowing that he would never be able to take part in their grand artificial Olympus; he was there as an upstart, as a reminder of the dread of all of Russia, of all mankind. Pierre, Hades, was the king over the domain of longing and discomfort. He mourned for all the world in his brooding way that he did, letting it sigh against his character until he left little else by way of impression.

  
Hades contributing to a cause did not mean that cause would succeed. He gave those he favored a fair chance, but it was their fault if, as they so often did, they failed, or became victim to their circumstance. Pierre had warned Anatole against pursuit of an elopement in spite of his marriage, as they all had, but still hadn’t failed to give him the means to do so. Helene, too, was not without guilt; she’d known the situation of unhappiness too well, and sought to remedy it for her favorite brother, anything that would give him the satisfaction she felt she couldn’t have. Anatole loved and shone over them all like the sun melts away the illusion of frost: his mistakes, too, bite like the bitter reminder in the air, that first smack after stepping out of a doorway that reminds the blissfully ignorant that sunshine could not chase away the winter wind. He remained willingly arrogant so long as others could be around to clean up his messes for him, those same people who would embrace and humor him, praising him for all the attributes he’d been praised for before, comforting him whenever the discomfort of the real world became too much for his fragile soul to bear. Anatole lived amongst the songs of the world, strumming hearts as easily as a lyre, composing his own epics to live out by the week. Hades related to him though he had never lived such a life; he envied him, finding contrarian wisdom in Anatole’s freedom, observing an ageless peace in exemplary youth and passion. He lived vicariously through Anatole, even in his faults, and so kept supplying his endeavors, planting the seeds for the fruits that would rot and trap Anatole one day, turning back on him as all good things did until he was little more than a pile of salt on the burning, barren earth. So Pierre knew the world turned, and so Helene knew was the natural order, and so they humored him that the only pain he ever knew may be his last.

In those ways they were alike, and in many more they were so different. Helene did not know enough of Greek mythology to know if Persephone ever found freedom, or if she truly did love Hades in spite of everything, if she was able to adapt to her new cruel environment. For her own sake, Helene hoped that she did. And if she didn’t, she hoped at least that she had been able to keep her husband alive. He deserved that much; everyone deserved that much. A chance to know life. If it was the wife who brought life into the house, then it was her duty to keep it there until all she’d planted failed to bloom and the last drop of happiness dried in the wells. So would Helene continue to live until she could not anymore, and so would Pierre finally feel alive when it was his time to die. Just as sure as the seasons would change. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna write more comparing Anatole to Orpheus and try to stretch it out to Dolokhov = Hermes and Natasha = Eurydice, but also fuck that??? I'm not getting paid enough for this.
> 
>  
> 
> I made a moodboard on tumblr along these same lines but I posted it on a Personal Blog so if you wanna see it hit me up on my main (lichbarry).


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